“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” ― Kurt Vonnegut, "Mother Night" (1961)
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Replying to @elanmastai
The Somerset Maugham short story THE LION'S SKIN touches on this very point -- and notes that sometimes pretending is ennobling.
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Replying to @MathPrinceps
Of course Maugham, in his stiff upper-lipped gentility, would find nobility in our social masks. I read Cakes & Ale in March.
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Replying to @elanmastai
A wonderful book -- but not, I would say, one calculated to engender in the reader a breathless and starry-eyed idealism.
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Replying to @MathPrinceps @elanmastai
And that a carefully cultivated reputation for greatness of soul -- a pose -- might therefore compel a scoundrel to act nobly.
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Replying to @MathPrinceps
That's an incisive observation. Although it illuminates the stark line between literature and politics.
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I completely agree. And I think Maugham understood that his scoundrel protagonist in THE LION'S SKIN was singularly malleable.
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Replying to @MathPrinceps @elanmastai
Most frauds care more for their necks and their pocketbooks than for the aesthetic persuasiveness of their assumed identities.
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